Configuring Lean Manufacturing in Dynamics AX 2012
Posted by Author, Canine & Equine Choreographer, Citizen AI Data Scientist, and Dynamics 365 Global Black Belt at Microsoft on
- The Lean Manufacturing capabilities are new with Dynamics AX 2012, and they give you a different way of managing your manufacturing processes as compared to the traditional discrete manufacturing models of BOM’s and Routes. Don’t be scared away though by its new terminology and constructs that it uses to model the manufacturing processes. It shares a number of the processes that the traditional manufacturing models use, and is pretty easy to configure if you know the right steps.
Also, you don’t have to be a pure “Lean” organization to use the Lean manufacturing processes that are built into Dynamics AX. You can pick and choose what you use, and even create hybrid manufacturing models that blend both the traditional and lean processes.
In this worked example I will show you how you can create a simple set of Lean Manufacturing processes and see them in in action.
The topics that are described within this series are:
- Configuring a Value Stream
- Configuring a Production Group
- Creating a Production Flow Model
- Creating a Work Cell
- Creating a Production Flow
- Creating a Production Flow Activity
- Activating Your Process Flow Version
- Creating a Kanban Manufacturing Rule
- Assigning Tasks to Work Cells Through the Kanban Scheduling Board
- Reporting Jobs through the Kanban Board for Process Jobs
In this worked example we worked through the setup of a set of simple production and transfer Kanbans. The interesting thing about these processes, is that you don’t necessarily need to be a Lean Manufacturer in order to take advantage of these capabilities. For piece work, then this process works really well, and also the transfer Kanbans can easily be used by traditional manufacturers to replenish floor stocking areas.
Once you have worked through these examples, you may want to branch out and try other areas of the Lean Manufacturing that we didn’t address in this presentation. Features that you may want to try include:
- Having multiple activities in a Process Flow that are chained together.
- Using the bar code scanning to further automate the job reporting process
- Using the planning and scheduling in conjunction with the Lean Manufacturing to create the purchase forecasts etc.
This is a really useful feature within Dynamics AX. Just because you have always used BOM’s and Routes does not mean that you can’t dabble in Process Flows and Activities. Give it a try and I’m sure you will like what you find out.
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